


shadowkat | Henri Bergson & An annotated musing on ATS 5.15

by shadowkat67



Series: Angel The Series - Season 5- Episode Reviews [3]
Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Episode Related, Episode Review, Episode: s05e15 A Hole In The World, Gen, Literary References & Allusions, Philosophy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-02-26
Updated: 2004-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:00:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22398202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkat67/pseuds/shadowkat67
Summary: Okay, I've gotten ambitious again and went into areas that are slightly outside my scope, such as philosophy, neurobiology and well, Monty Python (which I skimp on). The following is about ATS 5.15 Hole in The World. It contains information on a philosopher Henri Bergson, a philosopher that was studied and debated by phyiscists and philosophers, including Einstein and Sartre, as well as information from neurbiologist James McGaugh - an expert on memory loss. Hopefully it makes some semblance of sense. I would greatly appreciate any comments you have! (Too scared to post on the public fanboards right now, I have miserable thin skin.)I've organized it in three parts.
Relationships: Angel/Spike (BtVS), Winifred "Fred" Burkle/Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
Series: Angel The Series - Season 5- Episode Reviews [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1612354
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	shadowkat | Henri Bergson & An annotated musing on ATS 5.15

_“There’s a hole in the world, feels like we ought to have known.”_

PART I. **What is a Hole in The World?**

In Angel the Series three holes have been punctured in the world at different points in time – first in **Sleep Tight** , when Saijhan punctures a hole in the fabric of reality to push Connor and Holtz through. Then in **The Price** when Connor and Holtz puncture the fabric of reality to return. This hole has to be closed by a mystic. And then in **Home** when Angel creates a hole by removing Connor from the world’s memory.

Holes aren’t things to be taken lightly – I know because I’ve experienced what it is like to have a hole punctured in your world, nothing is the same afterwards. A hole was punctured in our world on 9/11. The fabric of reality shifted in ways I think we are just beginning to comprehend. This is one of the reasons I have difficulties with movies on time travel – because traveling back in time punctures reality – if you touch or hurt one item in the past, you tear the fabric and create a hole.

Here’s a snippet of an interview with neurobiologist James McGaugh from  Scientific American that my friend cjl sent me regarding the effect of removing one memory from your brain.

>   
>  _“Let's suppose I said I am going to say a word to you and then I am going to use a new magical technique that technology has provided to eliminate that memory. So now I say "bicycle" and I go zap. Now think about bicycle. I said the word bicycle, but you know the general meaning of bicycle, you know what a bicycle looks like, you may remember a specific bicycle, you may remember having done something on a specific bicycle, and you remember how to ride a bicycle. Did I get rid of all of those? Not very likely, because those are all very deeply embedded in all kinds of memories that you have. Let's suppose that I did get rid of all of those; then you'd lose a huge portion of your life. Everything you knew about riding a bicycle would go, which would mean everything connected to that would also go. Your home, your family would be gone, and it can't work that way. There is an interconnectedness to the knowledge we have. Information does not exist in the abstract.”_

Removing one memory creates a sort of black hole or a vortex into which all your other memories are sucked into and shredded. Your reality shifts and you become someone else.

So what effect did Angel’s removal of Connor have on the personalities, individual growth and realities of his friends? What were the consequences of creating a hole in the world?

**PART II. Henri Bergson and The Caveman/Astronaut debate**

_"Art has no other object than to set aside the symbols of practical utility, the generalities that are conventionally and socially accepted, everything in fact which masks reality from us, in order to set us face to face with reality itself."_ Henri Bergson, Le Rire, 1900.

<http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/bergson.htm>

Henri Bergson, who died in the early 1940s of bronchitis, attempted to integrate biological discoveries with a theory of consciousness. According to the website listed above, his philosophy countered the mechanistic view of nature – adopted by Darwinists at the time. He believed that the creative urge not the Darwinian view of natural selection was at the root of evolution. He believed in instinct. According to Bergson intuition was the way we would find the truth, it lay at the heart of reality. Bergson basically agrees with Spike in the Angel-Spike debate. Or does he? Interesting debate.

> Angel: “You can’t see the big picture.”  
>  Spike: “I am talking about something primal, brutual, animal instinct.”  
>  Angel: “The human race have evolved..”  
>  Spike: “Into a bunch of namby-pamby self-analyzing wankers.”  
>  Angel: “We’re brighter, smarter, there’s a thing called teamwork, not to mention the superstitious terror of your pure aggressors.”  
>  [Wes interrupts the debate and asks what it is about.]  
>  Spike: “In a fight between astronauts and cavemen, who would win?”  
>  Wes (after a moment dealing with the fact they’ve been arguing about this for 40 min): “Do the astronauts have weapons?” (From Hole in The World, 5.15 ATS)

Bergson would probably grin. Because both boys are right. That’s the fun of Angel and Spike, they are both right and wrong at the same time. Also flip them and you find at one point in time or another they would be arguing the opposite. How much do you want to bet if they’d had this argument prior to being turned: Liam would have been arguing instinct and William would have been arguing reason? I also like what it says about Wesley, who is always looking at who has the advantage. Reason can help save the day but so does instinct. This is something Gunn has forgotten, since his strength was always his gut, but all those memory boosts have made him rely less and less upon it. He’s relying on others to tell him what he wants to hear. First the conduit. Then Knox. He’s now Mr. Reason Guy, Mr. Rational, The Astronaut. Fred’s done the same thing, she left the cave behind and became Ms. Science Girl, the explorer, the astronaut. Meanwhile, we have an old cave-dweller lurking in the shadows waiting for its moment to strike. Spike and Angel team up to help Fred by using a combination of instinct and reason, Angel strategizes, and Spike reacts and intuits – trusting in Angel’s strategy and creatively building on it – such as the end when Angel turns to him, and he answers with the poetry.  
In some ways, Hole in The World is telling two love stories – both deal with people who are struggling with that internal war between intellect and instinct. Fred says the cavemen win – pure instinct. Wes isn’t so sure, still relying on intellect. Still believing there’s a chance.

Bergson also believed, getting back to McGaugh, that human perception and consciousness was a continual flow, uninterrupted by demarcations in space or time.

Here’s a quote from a web site I found analyzing Henri Bergson’s philosophy: “While the physicist observes objects and events in succession, time is presented to consciousness as duration - an endlessly flowing process. Bergson argued that the 'real time' is experienced as duration and apprehended by intuition, not through separate operations of instinct and the intellect.” (This is commenting on what Bergson said in Time and Free Will (1889).)

So Bergson believed it was a combination of the two, not one or the other. To Bergson, whether the astronauts or cavemen won was immaterial and depended on the situation at hand. The winner would be the one who could rely on both – intellect and instinct.

**Part III. An Annotated Analysis of Hole in The World**

1\. Crystals & Nests

A. Nests:  
First scene, shows Fred packing up her things in her bedroom and discussing going to school instead of staying home and getting married and raising kids in her dresser drawers. Living safe in the family nest. The idea of Fred feeling safe in nests and forcing herself to leave them is a theme that is also visited in Through the Looking Glass S2, when she leaves her cave-like dwelling to help Angel, in This Gang of Mine S3, when she leaves her room in the Hyperion and is threatened at Caritas by Gunn’s Gang, yet helps save the day by turning the tables on them, in Supersymmetry where she leaves Gunn and her room to seek vengeance on Seidel, in The Magic Bullet where she leaves a hole in the ground to shoot some sense into Angel, and now in Hole in The World, she’s taken back by Wes to her womblike bedroom, red, and safe, to die and gestate Illyria. Back to the nest so to speak. To emerge – as Illyria, a demon princess warrior. In each case she emerges from the cave stronger and altered. This is no exception.

B. Crystals  
Fred and Wes are fighting bugs on the walls, parasitic monsters, who shoot crystals to reproduce. They look a bit like the parasites in Soul Purpose actually. And Angel once again gets attacked by one, which Spike kills in an interesting way.

Fred to Wes: “They reproduce by vomiting up crystals that attract and mutate the microbes around them to form eggs.”

Fredless – Fred figures out the demon insects are after the eggs laid in the demon’s head, from the crystals she found on the head and that were vomited on her clothes by the demon. That’s the trail. Her discovery enables her to come back to the Hyperion and save the gang with a contraption that slices open the head freeing the eggs so the parents can recover them and leave.

Hole in The World – it is by touching a crystal that Fred opens the sarcophagus and Illyria infects her. Illyria attracts Fred, ironically, through the same means as the creatures she destroys at the beginning of the episode attract and form their eggs. She becomes literally Illyria’s shell or egg to hatch out of.

2\. Three Little Maids from School

 _“Three Little Maids from School – who all unwary come a ladies seminary, freed from a genius tutelary, three little maids from school…”_ Gilbert & Sullivan, The Mikado.

In the Mikado – the three maids are set up with three men, one with the hero, one as the bride of the Lord High Executioner, and the third with the Lord High Executioner’s colleague. Yum-Yum – the one with the hero is the most pure and innocent and is in the way of the Mikado’s son marrying a nasty old woman. The other two are a little more conniving.

In Angel the Series – we also have three little maids from school:

Cordelia – who has a choice between having her head explode or becoming part-demon, not realizing becoming part-demon means also being a gestation device for a higher being – Jasmine, which seeks to corrupt her body for its own purposes.

Nina – who is bitten by a werewolf and the werewolf gestates within her over a lunar cycle. Every time there is a full moon – the monster breaks out, she becomes something else.

Fred – who leaves home to investigate the world in a scientific way, gets a sarcophagus and by investigating the sarcophagus is infected by a deadly virus.

All unwary, Fred come from a ladies seminary (school in Texas), is freed from a genius tutelary (Seidel and Pylea), little maid from school….

Interesting that Gunn sings it and he hides it from Wes. Gunn who was Fred’s first boyfriend with the AI team and Wes who becomes her final one. Gunn who saves Fred twice in Supersymmetry (at the sake of his own soul) and in The Price (by enlisting Wes’ help against Angel’s wishes and getting the treatment to her in time), is in fact the one who puts her in danger this round – a danger that no one can free her from. And he does it for what? Knowledge. The reason he and Fred may have broken apart – Gunn’s insecurity over his lack of knowledge. He implants the knowledge in himself, literally selling his soul for it, and Fred’s – an interesting reference back to Double or Nothing – where it became clear to Gunn that they would take Fred’s soul if he didn’t give up his as he’d bargained ages ago…for a truck.

Also the horrible joke Gunn plays on Wes about the idea of him and Fred getting back together, and the comment Gunn makes – “if you hurt her, I’ll kill you quicker than a chicken.” He does make good on that comment with Knox. The question is will Wes? Since it was Gunn who, however inadvertently, set it all in motion.

3\. “The Handsome Man Saves Me”

Saving. Angel’s whole purpose in life is to save doomed souls like himself. Yet, his curse seems to be to never be able to connect to them or to save those who are closest to him. I was struck by this irony in Smallville, where the only person Clark Kent wants to save is his father and Superman fans know that is the one person Clark can’t save. Just as the one person in all the world that Buffy wanted to save was her mother, Joyce, and Joyce is the one person she can’t save. Angel has it far worse than Buffy does, because Buffy could save her friends, she could save Willow, Xander, Giles, Dawn, and even to some degree Angel himself. Angel couldn’t save Darla, Connor, or Cordelia. And now….

> Spike: “You won’t lose her.”  
>  Angel: “I lost Cordy.”

He can save the Ninas, the Kates, the odd damsels, even the Faiths – but when it comes to those who are closest to him, who he has a chance of happiness with, he doesn’t appear to have a chance in hell. And I can’t help but wonder if he’s asking himself the same question I am, if I can’t save them – how can I begin to save myself. That may in essence be one of the many reasons he wanted to send Spike as far away from him as possible, he’s starting to care too much.

Fred discusses saving people with Angel in several episodes this season. In Unleashed and Hellbound – she asks Angel to help her save Spike, even if doing so would break Wolfram and Hart financially. Angel retorts some people aren’t worth saving. Something Spike appears to agree with. Fred tells him she thinks he is worth saving. He has saved her. But this round is different, this time thousands, millions of lives could be lost if they even attempt it and it may be too late anyway.

Fred: “I am not a damsel. I’m not. I save myself. I lived in a cave in Pylea for five years…”

Fred doesn’t want to be saved by someone else. She walks with heroes, but she wants that to be because she is one. Not their damsel. Never their damsel. Yet in this house of death she has become one. And it is ironically by a specimen, something she investigated.

4\. “She felt as if she’d lived a long long time…” from The Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

The Little Princess is about a girl who lost her father and mistreated in an orphanage, where a nasty headmistress leeched off of her inheritance. In the book she rises above the headmistress and helps inspire a servant/slave girl and regains her inheritance in the end.

When Fred asks Wes to read the Little Princess, he is reading the “Dread Host’s Companion of Immortal Leeches”.

Illyria is an immortal leech yet also in a way the Little Princess Warrior God, beloved and feared of many, who has lived a long long time. So is the Little Princess tale about Fred or about Illyria? Or about both?

We also have Eve’s song to Lorne – “She’s pretty as a picture, like a golden wing…” does this song refer to Eve or to Fred? Both girl’s fates seem pretty dire. And Lorne who appears to be off on everyone else – actually reads Fred when she sings _My Only Sunshine_ and Eve when she sings her own line.

5\. “My Sunshine, My only Sunshine… You make me Happy”

 _Oh my darling Clementine_ and _My Only Sunshine_ ….two songs which refer to both Fred and Connor.

The first one, sung also by Lorne, in Soul Purpose, is about losing a girl down a well or mine shaft. She’s lost and gone for ever…Fred also appears to lost down a well – the deeper well inside her own body. Not unlike the tiny gold-fish swimming in Angel’s bowl – that she retrieves from Angel’s body in his dream. Connor similarly is lost down a well – this is the well of memory that Angel flushed him down to preserve his life.

Sunshine is the opposite of Clementine. It’s about gaining as opposed to loss. No need for clemency in Sunshine. The world is sunny and happy. Fred is Wes’ sunshine, she is the sunshine of the AI team, the one good light in their midst. Now her light has gone out. She has become Gunn’s Clementine – something he needs forgiveness for, and Wes’ Clementine – something he’s lost down a well. Connor as a child, a baby was Angel’s sunshine, it was a song Lorne hummed to him. But when he is taken through the hole in the fabric of reality by Holtz, he becomes Clementine, something Angel has lost and will never regain and seeks clemency for.

6\. “Her organs are cooking. In a day’s time they’ll liquefy.”

Interesting motif – two of the four male characters have experienced something akin to this.

a. Spike – literally burned up from the inside out, his organs, his eyeballs, everything melting and liquefying to end up embedded in the amulet. (Just Rewards, S5 ATS)  
b. Angel – in his dream he experienced Fred removing his organs one by one, hollowing him out so that he was nothing but a shell. (Soul Purpose, S5 ATS) This is the same thing that is happening to Fred according to Angel and Wes, she’s being hollowed out so there is nothing left but a shell.

Also refers back to two other episodes:

a. Inside/Out – where Cordelia by giving birth to Jasmine – has her entire life force sucked out of her, leaving nothing behind but a vegetable.  
b. The Price – the parasite who takes Fred’s body, is sucking all of her moisture, hardening her skin, cracking it, and taking over her mind – until Gunn via Wes finds a way to pull the parasite out.

7\. “Where’s Feigenbaum? I need him! He’s the Master..”

Feigenbaum, the bunny rabbit, is The Master of Chaos. (What is it with Whedon and Bunny Rabbits? Maybe he’s watched Monty Python and The Holy Grail one too many times.)

Mitchell Feigenbaum is apparently the author of the chaos theory. He discovered in 1975 the point at which periodic equations turned chaotic. Based on his discoveries, physicists where able to form a means of analyzing a chaotic universe.

> 8\. Spike: “When is a door not a door? When it’s not there.”  
>  Angel: “How much you want to bet that tree is it?”  
>  Spike: “Either that or it could be the door to Christmasland.”

The door to Christmas land is a reference to The Nightmare Before Christmas, where Jack Skeleton kidnaps Santa Claus out of a desire to do something different. Tired of doing Halloween, year after year, Skeleton discovers Christmasland and thinks, wait here’s a new thing. Unfortunately his desire to try something different results in chaos. Its not the creativity itself that’s the problem, it’s how he decides to use it. The recklessness of his exploration. This circles back to Fred’s mother’s request:

“Promise me you will be careful.” And Fred’s response – “I’ll be more than careful, I’ll study everything and learn everything and look under every corner..”

It’s Fred’s reckless investigations and trust in colleagues that lead her to Pylea in the first place. She trusts Seidel and her curiosity persuades her to open the book, which pulls her to Pylea and hell. In Hole in The World, her curiosity about the sarcophagus tempts her to get too close to it, not treat it with caution and she gets infected. Like Jack Skeleton, Fred opens the door to what appears to be a world filled with wonder, only to find herself in Hell. Sort of the old story of Genesis turned on its head – you take a bite of the apple of knowledge and you are doomed.

9\. The Scientists Worship Illyria

What is it with evil Scientists/Doctors on this show? We have Pavayne who is an evil surgeon. The Doctor in Unleashed who betrays Nina to the party-goers. The scientists in Why We Fight who are experimenting on the vampires in order to turn them into weapons. The scientists in Conviction who create a virus to place in a boy that was created by a shaman.

Interesting that it is two scientists that we see worshipping Illyria. And the scientists are the ones who are paired with Gunn and Fred. The first one – we see in Smile Time, he’s implanting knowledge in Gunn. He’ll do it in exchange for a little favor, clear an artifact through customs, no questions asked. Gunn agrees desperate not to lose his knowledge. Fred is introduced to the best science lab in the world through Knox, the cutest science nerd anyone could ask for. Knox tells Fred from the get-go that he has contained and created an equal number of viruses in Conviction. Not surprising his god would be a demon pathogen. Both scientists are thrilled with the idea of changing something or infecting it. In both cases the infection makes the individual appear more powerful than they were before – Gunn becomes Mr. Lawyer Guy, a whiz, while the new Fred – well Illyria certainly looks different.

10\. Monty Python and The Holy Grail

Lots of references to that film here – one wonders if Whedon has spent one too many evenings watching that movie. Drogon who hates questions and Spike who can do nothing but speak in questions. Similar to the guard in Monty Python who requires you speak in questions to get through (I think, I unlike Whedon, have only seen the film once.) Spike and Angel have to fight a bunch of knights to get into a cave filled with sarcophaguses. And the rabbit – which ahem you have to watch the film to truly understand.

Final Notes

Overall a wonderful episode. I may have been more moved if I hadn’t felt that demonizing yet another female character wasn’t just a tad redundant. What is it with Joss Whedon and the whole sick mother becomes a demon motif? It is an interesting trend though – we have William’s mother – Anne, Joyce, Cordelia, Darla, Drusilla, Willow, and now Fred.

Nice use of foreshadowing – Spike’s comment to Wes in Lineage – “I had to kill my mother, well actually I sired her to save her from illness then had to stake her after she tried to shag me.” Also, Whedon seems to like the visual of the blood of the victim spurting onto their lover. In Seeing Red – he had Tara’s blood splatter Willow’s shirt when Tara is shot. In Hole in The World – Fred’s sickness becomes apparent when she spits blood in Wes’ face.

The parallel of the two love stories:  
Wes and Fred moving closer together throughout the episode, until they are suddenly thrust apart by Illyria. Spike and Angel resisting each other, bickering, breaking apart until they are thrust together by Illyria to save Fred.


End file.
